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Congress on Monday approved the first national effort to stem a flood of unwanted E-mail pitches offering prescription drugs, cheap loans, and other come-ons.

The House voted without dissent to approve slight changes Senate lawmakers made to the “can spam” legislation, which would outlaw the shadiest techniques used by the Internet’s most prolific E-mailers, who send tens of millions of messages each day. The last such major legislation was a 1998 law banning Web sites from collecting personal information from children under 13.

The anti-spam bill encourages the Federal Trade Commission to create a do-not-spam list of E-mail addresses and includes penalties for spammers of up to five years in prison in rare circumstances.

More info: [url=http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=16600425]http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=16600425[/url]

The working groups have pledged to release white papers by 1 March, 2004, that outline their recommendations for securing businesses and consumers and creating more secure software.

Critics have snubbed the United States’ cybersecurity policy — the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace — as largely voluntary and lacking regulatory prescriptions.

The four organisations that sponsored the Summit were the Business Software Alliance, the Information Technology Association of America, the TechNet lobbying group and the US Chamber of Commerce.

Security experts formed five groups to focus on specific problem areas: creating awareness in home computer users and small businesses; establishing a cybersecurity early warning system; making information security part of corporate governance; advocating technical best practices for security; and pushing security improvements into the software development process.

Despite the pressure to deliver, reigning in the groups to focus on concrete ideas that could be implemented quickly was a task, Oracle’s Davidson said.

More info: [url=http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39118329,00.htm]http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39118329,00.htm[/url]

“Without a new killer app in Office, the upgrade cycle looks to be gradual until new XML-based technologies take hold of the broader market,” said the report. Professor Neil Barratt, technical director at security consultant Information Risk Management, said: “My reading of this is that it’s a shot across the bows.

“The main beef most CIOs have is patching; the perception is that the Microsoft patching system needs a lot more work.

More info: [url=http://www.vnunet.com/News/1151313]http://www.vnunet.com/News/1151313[/url]

However, less than favourable economic climates and ever-dwindling budgets mean that many organisations never invest in anything more advanced than an anti-virus package and a firewall solution.

In fact, companies need to stop looking at security as a purely preventative measure and realise that it can actually be a business enabler, but recognising the real benefits that more sophisticated solutions can bring to business seems to be eluding many organisations.

It stands to reason that when money is tight, investment is hindered.

The 2003 Ernst and Young Global Information Security Survey found that spending on technology, education, training and infrastructure to support IT security is slipping further down the priority list.

Mobile working and remote access have been widely welcomed by employers and employees alike.

Company bosses are won over by the extra productivity it can bring to business and the workforce is attracted by the added freedom and flexibility it enables in doing their jobs.

Whilst the mobile working revolution provides organisations with ease and convenience, it can have serious implications for security and information integrity which cannot be ignored.

In order to do their jobs outside the office, employees often need to download vital, confidential company information to their laptops and PDAs.

This means that at best you have just lost an expensive piece of kit which now needs replacing, but at worst your private company information ends up in the wrong hands.

It’s all very well rolling out laptops and PDAs to your employees, but without adequate security any potential gain from implementing mobile working may be lost along with your private company data.

Security solutions specifically designed to protect wireless devices are enabling organisations to enjoy mobile computing safe in the knowledge that security isn’t being sacrificed.

For example, with single sign-on and application launch control features, you can deliver both productivity and security improvements, enabling your business to take advantage of the latest technologies, such as GPRS, in a secure fashion.

The financial, retail and telecommunications industries have been benefiting from smartcard technology for a number of years, however its potential for enhancing security within all organisations is being recognised.

The major concern for most, if not all organisations is the bottom line and being able to survive over the competition.

Being able to take advantage of the latest technology and working procedures is the key to ensuring competitiveness in an overcrowded market and the board must recognise that security is a true business enabler.

More info: [url=http://www.infosecnews.com/opinion/2003/12/03_02.htm]http://www.infosecnews.com/opinion/2003/12/03_02.htm[/url]

There is the usual dispute over which virus is most common, but the Sober and Swen worms have scored highly.

“Sober has had a big impact because it’s in English and German and many Germans don’t expect viruses in their own language,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

“We’re also seeing new MiMail viruses cropping up and there seems to be organised intent behind it; the authors have targeted users and anti-spam websites. So far 12 MiMail variants have been found, ranging from simple email harvesters to ‘phishing’ attacks that seek users’ PayPal or bank details. The worm is thought to have originated in Eastern Europe.

Klez H is still in most charts, making it one of the most persistent viruses in history.

More info: [url=http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/News/1151236]http://www.infomaticsonline.co.uk/News/1151236[/url]

It includes asset management, device discovery, software license management, PC remote control, software distribution, and operating system recovery and migration.

Macintosh support has also been improved in this version.

To combat any network degradation and to increase performance to remote computers, LANDesk 8 provides bandwidth throttling, multicast distribution, and checkpoint restarts. For example, to distribute a security update to all Microsoft Office users or a new virus definition to all your users, you can simply specify the maximum bandwidth and eliminate congestion issues.

Using its peer download technology, LANDesk 8 will serve the appropriate packages to a select number of users across your network’s various subnets, and those machines will in turn serve them to their peers.

In the event that a machine shuts down halfway through a transfer, the byte-level checkpoint restart feature will ensure that the update gets efficiently completed upon restart.

LANDesk 8 presents a lot of management capabilities in one package, as do competitors such as Microsoft SMS and Novell ZenWorks.

While the initial experience can be a little daunting, the performance enhancements that LANDesk 8 delivers (namely the multicast and incremental file-transfer capabilities) are worth the initial start-up pains.

More info: [url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1399924,00.asp?kc=PCRSS02129TX1K0000530]http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1399924,00.asp?kc=PCRSS02129TX1K0000530[/url]